Fire safety system problems on new Arctic ship delays deployment on northern exercise

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  18 juin 2018 | Local, Aérospatial

  Canada to purchase 25 used Australian F-18 jets if U.S. gives approval

  David Pugliese, Ottawa Citizen The Liberals had originally announced they would buy 18 used Australian jets to augment Canada's CF-18s. The extra aircraft will likely be stripped down for parts Canada has boosted the number of used Australian fighter jets it is purchasing to 25, but the deal still hinges on approval from the U.S. government. The Liberal government originally announced it would buy 18 used Australian F-18 jets to augment the Royal Canadian Air Force's CF-18s until new aircraft can be purchased in the coming years. It has added seven more aircraft to the deal, Dan Blouin, a spokesman for the Department of National Defence, confirmed Friday. Those extra aircraft will likely be stripped down for parts. It is not known yet if the seven aircraft will be flown to Canada or shipped, Blouin added. The exact cost of the aircraft, along with weapons and other equipment, is not yet known as negotiations are still underway, Procurement Minister Carla Qualtrough recently told journalists. The Liberal government has set aside up to $500 million for the project and that would cover the seven added jets. An Australian Senate hearing was recently told that Canada was presented with a cost proposal last year. “They accepted our offer in December, but they have also put in a further request for some seven aircraft for system testing, training and spares,” Australian Air Vice Marshal Cath Roberts told the hearing. The U.S. government is examining the deal and will have to give its approval before Australia can sell the F-18s to Canada, because the F-18s were built in the U.S. with American technology. Canada is hoping for the U.S. approval sometime in the summer. Although U.S.-Canada relations have hit a slump, with President Donald Trump vowing to punish Canadians over economic disputes, the DND does not expect that to affect approval of the fighter jet deal. Pat Finn, DND's assistant deputy minister of materiel, has said he expects a deal by the end of the year with deliveries of the Australian planes to begin in the summer of 2019. The government originally planned for the arrival of the first used aircraft next January. The government had originally planned to buy 18 new Super Hornet fighter jets from U.S. aerospace giant Boeing. But, last year, Boeing complained to the U.S. Commerce Department that Canadian subsidies for Quebec-based Bombardier allowed it to sell its C-series civilian passenger aircraft in the U.S. at cut-rate prices. As a result, the Trump administration brought in a tariff of almost 300 per cent against the Bombardier aircraft sold in the U.S. In retaliation, Canada cancelled the deal to buy the 18 Super Hornets. That project would have cost more than US$5 billion. In the meantime, the federal government expects to issue next year a request for proposals from aerospace firms who want to take part in the competition to provide Canada with 88 new fighter jets. That project, with a $19 billion price-tag, would see the purchase of a new fleet of planes that would replace both the CF-18s and the used Australian jets.A winning bidder is expected to be selected in spring 2021 and the first of the new aircraft would be delivered four years later. The last CF-18 will be retired in 2032. http://nationalpost.com/news/politics/canada-to-purchase-25-used-australian-fighter-jets-if-states-says-yes

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  9 avril 2020 | Local, Sécurité

  Pandemic equipment snarls will rewrite Canada's definition of national security needs, say experts

  When every country needs the same stuff to keep people safe, cost arguments seem less convincing The mad scramble to secure protective medical equipment and ventilators in the midst of a global pandemic has given some of the people who work in the usually tedious world of government procurement an unwelcome excuse to say, "I told you so." For years, there have been quiet but persistent demands coming out of the defence and acquisition sectors for successive federal governments to develop a list of "strategic industries" that do not have to rely on foreign supply chains — as insurance against the kind of procurement panic in play right now. Those calls were largely ignored. Now, defence experts are saying the COVID-19 crisis is a costly wake-up call. Canada needs — and has needed for almost two decades — a 21st century national security industrial plan that focuses on critical equipment and materials that should be produced at home, not abroad. 'Totally negligent' "We've been totally negligent on that and it is something I have articulated over and over again," said Alan Williams, the former head of the procurement branch at the Department of National Defence. "It's absolutely critical and if this doesn't wake us to that reality, I don't know what would." Williams devoted a substantial portion of one of his books, Reinventing Canadian Defence Procurement: A View from the Inside, to the absence of a national security vision of Canadian industry. "It frankly pisses me off because there's no reason for us not to have done that," he said. "That should be the kind of thing ministers, the leaders of the country desperately want to do. And why we seem to have avoided that kind of strategic thinking ... It just boggles my mind. It's inexcusable." 'Key' industries geared toward trade, not tragedies There was a faint glimmer of hope in the initial debate over the National Shipbuilding Strategy a decade ago, when the former Conservative government made a conscious decision to build future warships, Canadian Coast Guard and fisheries vessels in Canada, instead of outsourcing the work to other countries. At least in the context of defence procurement, Canada does have what are known as "key industrial capabilities", including shipbuilding, the production of certain types of ammunition and the construction of a range of aerospace and maritime electronic systems. Much of the work of those "key" domestic industries is, however, geared toward making high-end components for global supply chains. Critics have often said the policy focuses on high-tech innovation and business priorities, rather than hard-headed national security interests. Other countries, Williams said, have carved out a space for national security interests in industrial policy by not allowing other countries to build certain pieces of equipment. The Japanese, for example, have retained the capability to assemble their own warplanes. A shift in thinking The COVID-19 crisis, which has uncovered a potentially deadly shortage of ventilators and protective equipment for medical professionals, will push the federal government into a radical re-evaluation of what we need to be able to build at home to protect the country. In some respects, that work has already started. Earlier this week, reflecting on the Trump administration's moves to restrict exports of protective equipment, Ontario Premier Doug Ford expressed dismay over how the fate of so many Canadians had been taken out of the hands of the federal and provincial governments. Doctors, nurses demand government fill 'unacceptable' gaps in protective gear on front lines Canada working to produce up to 30,000 ventilators domestically: Trudeau "I am just so, so disappointed right now," he said. "We have a great relationship with the U.S. and all of a sudden they pull these shenanigans. But as I said yesterday, we will never rely on any other country going forward." Over the past two weeks, the federal government has announced plans to pour more than $2 billion into sourcing and acquiring protective medical equipment — masks, gowns, face shields, hand sanitizer — at home. On Tuesday, Ottawa unveiled a plan to get three Canadian companies to build 30,000 ventilators. Health equipment may have been outside the normal definition of national security needs until just a few weeks ago — but the shifting geopolitical landscape offered another warning sign that was ignored, said procurement expert Dave Perry. Leaning on China "This is pointing out the flip side of our globalized world and globalized supply chains," said Perry, an analyst and vice president at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute. "The cold, hard truth is that we're going to be relying on China for critical supplies." When the coronavirus outbreak ramped up, federal officials should have been aware of the potential peril involved in relying on Chinese factories for so many critical items. But in the absence of homegrown capability, Canada is at the mercy of panicked nations in the midst of panicked buying. "The entire world is trying to put through orders from the same sets of factories we're trying to source from," Perry said. "It might be accurate to criticize the Chinese for their response, but in the current context the government has to be cognizant of the impact on our potential ability to source stuff we really, really need right now from China — when there's not a lot of other options available in the short term and when the rest of the world is making the same phone calls." One of the critical arguments against a homegrown national security industrial strategy has been the cost. It's an argument familiar from the shipbuilding context: taxpayers pay a premium when we task Canadian industry with delivering solutions, instead of turning to cheaper foreign manufacturers. Elinor Sloan, a defence policy expert at Carleton University, said she believes the crisis will focus the public's attention on securing the critical industries and supplies the country needs in a global crisis. "The trade-off, as we know, is that it can be more costly to build or produce at home," she said. "This crisis may engender a perspective among the public that the extra cost is worth it." https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/pandemic-covid-coronavirus-procurement-masks-ventilators-1.5525373

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  11 juin 2020 | Local, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

  Military spending needed more now than ever, top defence official says

  Lee Berthiaume The Canadian PressStaff Contact Published Thursday, June 11, 2020 4:20AM EDT OTTAWA -- The Defence Department's top civilian official is touting the importance of continued investments in the Canadian Armed Forces, and says she has received no indications the Liberal government is planning to cut spending because of the COVID-19 crisis. The comments by Defence Department deputy minister Jody Thomas come amid questions about how the Liberal government plans to find the tens of billions of dollars doled out in recent months to support Canadians during the pandemic. The emergency support, estimated at $153 billion at last count, has far surpassed expected government spending and significant belt-tightening is likely after the crisis as Ottawa will start searching for ways to keep the country from drowning in red ink. Military spending was previously slashed in the 1990s as Jean Chretien's Liberal government wrestled with massive deficits while Stephen Harper's Conservative government followed a similar course after the 2008-09 financial crash. That has prompted concerns within defence circles that the pattern will repeat itself after COVID-19, with fears the Liberals will lean heavily on the country's $29-billion defence budget to help get government spending back under control. In an interview with The Canadian Press, Thomas said she had not received any order or direction to slow or cut defence spending and that officials are continuing to work on the planned purchase of new warships, fighter jets and other equipment. "We are not experiencing any slowdowns," she said. "We are continuing very aggressively and ambitiously to continue our plan." That plan is the Liberals' defence strategy, which it released in 2017. Known as Strong, Secure, Engaged (SSE), the strategy promised $553 billion in military spending over 20 years. Much of that is to buy new equipment such as jets and warships. "There has been zero indication from anyone that there would be a cut to the budget," Thomas said, adding Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan "has been very clear of his expectations of us to execute on SSE." She went on to suggest the planned defence spending is actually needed as much now as before the pandemic as the crisis amplifies the already significant global uncertainty that existed before COVID-19. A scan of recent headlines underscores that uncertainty, from U.S. President Donald Trump's administration suggesting it may pull troops from Germany to China imposing its will on Hong Kong and flexing its muscles in the South China Sea. There are also ongoing concerns about Russia and the situation in the Middle East. "Canada has to be equipped," Thomas said. "In a post-COVID world, there is, I would say as the deputy minister of defence, a need for SSE to in fact be done more quickly rather than slow it down or cut the budget." The government last week tabled its latest request for money in Parliament, which included $585 million for the continued construction of two new naval support ships in Vancouver. The first of those ships is due in 2023. Defence analyst David Perry of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute said the Liberals have significantly ramped up military spending, but no one knows how fast the economy will recover or how deep Ottawa will be in the hole when the pandemic ends. "Without knowing more about these things, it's way too early to know what the impact will be to defence," he said. "But it's a basic fact of Canadian federal budgeting that if a government is looking to reduce all federal spending, DND plays a part in that because it spends the most money." And while trimming military spending was the route taken by previous governments, there are implications, as evidenced by the age of Canada's CF-18s and other old equipment and its lack of naval support vessels until the new ones are finished. "Part of the reason we're having issues with procurement today is because of the decisions that were taken before," Perry said. "The reasons they were taken -- rightly or wrongly, I would say largely rightly -- in the 1990s to reduce spending then, we're still dealing with the after-effects of it now because we didn't buy stuff then and we're trying to make up for lost time now." This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 11, 2020. https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/military-spending-needed-more-now-than-ever-top-defence-official-says-1.4979395